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I give him the stink eye, remembering all over again that I can’t drink liquor alongside him, before I begin drinking my soda.

Des settles into the couch, his shirt riding up as he drapes his arms across the seatbacks.

He takes a swig of his beer, eyeing me over the rim and looking as sinful as all get out.

This doesn’t feel like the end of an evening, it feels at the beginning. It also doesn’t feel like repayment.

The whole thing is a bit too intimate for that.

“What, pray tell, is going on my little siren’s mind?” he says, his eyes moving over me.

My little siren.

“I’m not your anything,” I say.

He takes another swig of his beer, smiling around the rim.

Once he brings the drink away, he swirls the amber liquid inside its bottle. “You were once my client,” he says, “and then you were my friend, and now …” His lips curve up almost nefariously, his silver eyes glittering. “Perhaps we won’t put a label on what we are now.”

The atmosphere in the room changes, becoming heavy, almost sultry. I don’t know whether it’s his magic, or just Des’s natural magnetism, but it has me shifting in my seat.

“Why come to earth?” I ask, desperate to get the focus off of our relationship—or lack thereof, in my opinion. “Why do any of this if you’re a king?”

Some of the heat in the room dissipates. He takes another swig of his drink before answering. “Do you want the appropriate explanation, or the real one?”

“Both,” I say, kicking my shoes off, so that I can better curl up on his couch.

Des notices the action, his expression becoming almost pleased.

“The appropriate answer is that I have time for it. Laws and politics aside, my kingdom does my most important job on its own,” he says, kicking his own booted feet up onto the couch and crossing them at the ankles. “It drags the night across the Otherworld.

“Another part of my job as King of the Night is to make sure that chaos exists, and chaos—that is the natural state of things, even here on earth. Again, the universe does my job for me.

“Then there are those other deeds that best happen under the cloak of darkness. Violence, sleep and—” he runs his gaze down one of my arms, and I feel a phantom finger trailing down my skin, “sex.”

My siren stirs.

“Let’s call thembaser impulses. And, again, those don’t need much management.”

Am I hearing him correctly?

I set my drink down on the coffee table. “So, you encourage … people to get it on?” I can’t believe we’ve never talked about this. He always acted like a nun around me. I never would’ve guessed this would be part of his job.

One of his eyebrows arches. “Would you like a demonstration?”

The siren in me is waking up. All the things he rules she feeds off of. Violence, chaos, …sex.

She would gladly take a whole armful of beads for such a demonstration.

He sees my silence for what it is—consideration. One moment he’s sprawled on his end of the couch, setting his drink down, the next, he disappears. I jolt when he reappears next to me on the couch.

“You would enjoy yourself, Callie,” he says, leaning in. This close to me, his presence is overwhelming. His lips brush my ear. “I would make sure of that.”

He was never like this with me before. Only now am I learning that he fought his most innate nature to be appropriate with me. Even when I put all the moves on him I could think of.

I clear my throat. “Des.” I’m drowning inyearsof desire for this man.

“Think about it.” He pulls away. “Nothing would please me more.”